Loneliness in the land of love.

My Photo scholarship 2011 entry

Worldwide | Monday, August 22, 2011 | 4 photos

With a genetic condition where my vision falls rapidly, I lost everything I had in life. For two long years, every known doctor was sought and tests were done. Finally, the rare condition was found, but what we also found was that there was no cure. Specialized hard contact lens was prescribed and I got a part of my vision back. Everything seemed so much more beautiful around me. That was when I took up the camera and decided I would shoot. There began the story of Waseem F Ahmed, the photographer who challenged life.

Today, I study Architecture. I travel a lot. And I know my journey has only begun.

In the summer of 2011, I travelled around India, alone with my camera. I found Agra particularly enchanting. There was something there in the air. The extent of poverty was evident, the beauty of the everything there took your breath away. It was like God decided He would give this city beauty in exchange for everything else it had.

In the photograph there lies a story of innocence and longing. There is a shot of two little boys, running around the ruins of the kala mahal, as the eternal symbol of love, the Taj, watched them. There is another picture of a group of orphaned kids, with their backs to the Taj, lost in a moment of bliss.

In another, you will notice, a boy would sit with his goat, alone under the overwhelming Buland Darwaza, as if to symbolize himself as a tiny but essential speck with the world around him.

The last of the series features a boat on the Yamuna, the polluted river behind the Taj. The day will come when these kids will traverse across the grime of this world and go beyond, as the tales go in India. This photograph represents that.